Dear Colleagues and Friends, Welcome to the Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology Newsletter for the 1st Quarter issue of FY20. We hope to keep you informed of our latest initiatives in patient care, education, and research within our Division. In this issue, you will meet several new members faculty members such as Dr. Rena Yadlapati, Dr. Pranab Barman and Dr. Heather Patton, as well as two new Nurse Practitioners Mary Kirk & Lysianne Pham. We also are honoring our graduating fellows and their accomplishments. We are proud to present within the newsletter exciting clinical & research updates and a faculty spotlight of Dr. Bernd Schnabl. Additionally, we will be highlighting The San Diego Digestive Diseases Research Center (SDDRC) and are excited for its recent launch. Take a peek inside as we present a glimpse of our patient-friendly Rancho Bernardo Clinic and offer you a look at our new scheduling software, QGenda being implemented this fall. It has been a successful year and I would like to celebrate all of the Division’s many successes and accomplishments highlighted within this edition of our newsletter. The extraordinary accomplishments of the Division are made possible by the hard work of each and every team member. I would like to thank you all for your efforts that makes our Division stand apart. I hope you enjoy reading this quarter's newsletter as our Division and faculty continue to accomplish amazing things, it’s a privilege to share but a few of these with you. Please send suggestions and submissions for future issues to j7jones@ucsd.edu and visit our website to learn more about our compassionate, comprehensive and innovative patient care, research, and educational programs. Sincerely,

William J. Sandborn, MD

Professor and Chief, Division of Gastroenterology

Message from the Chief:

Upcoming Events: State of the Division January 15, 2020 5:30-6:30pm

Advances in GI & Hepatology CME

February 1, 2020 Isenberg Lecture

Speaker: John Pandolfino

February 4, 2020 6:00pm – 7:30pm

Highlight Story

Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology

Edition: September 2019

Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health has been named an NPF Pancreatitis Center by the National Pancreas Foundation. This Designation is for premier health facilities that focus on high-quality, multidisciplinary approaches to pancreatic disease. We are one of only four centers in all of California!

Start Date: July 1, 2019

UC San Diego

Welcome Rena Yadlapati

Motility Faculty

Rena is an esophageal specialist on a physician scientist track with a research

focus on health services and outcomes research in esophageal motility, and

particularly, complex reflux syndromes such as extra-esophageal reflux and PPI

non-responsive GERD. Rena trained at Northwestern for GI fellowship, T32 in GI

physiology & psychology, advanced esophageal fellowship, and her masters. She

has been on faculty at the University of Colorado for the past two years where

she directed the Reflux & Esophageal Diseases Center. Rena received the ACG

Junior Faculty Development Award in 2018, and is a Co-Investigator on a multi-

site NIH R01 trial. She is active nationally, including serving as a GRADE

Methodologist for the ACG Guidelines Committee and a Founding Board Member

of the American Foregut Society. Rena is originally from Southern California, and

is ecstatic to be moving back home with her husband and two little kids to join

the team at UCSD!

Start Date: September 1, 2019

Welcome Pranab Barman

Hepatology Faculty Pranab is a clinical transplant hepatologist with a research interest in pre-

transplant disparities and access to care. He trained at the University of Michigan

(Internal Medicine Residency), Northwestern (Gastroenterology fellowship) and

Duke for his final year of Transplant Hepatology fellowship. He served as a chief

medical resident at the University of Michigan and completed the Clinical Scholars

Program in Medical Education at Northwestern and through both of these

experiences developed a passion for medical education. Throughout his training,

he has been involved in hospital-based committees for quality improvement and

medical education initiatives at both the medical school and GME level.

Additionally, he is currently active nationally involved in the AASLD Public

Health/Health Care Delivery SIG and the AST LICOP (American Society of

Transplantation Liver Intestinal Community of Practice). Outside of the hospital, he

is an avid traveler, a huge fan of all sports, especially his Bay Area teams and loves

to play golf. Originally from the Bay Area, he is very excited to move back to

California with his wife and join the hepatology group at UCSD!

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Start Date:

June 3, 2019

Start Date:

September 1, 2019

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Welcome Heather Patton, Hepatology Faculty

Heather Patton will be rejoining the division in September with a full-time hepatology

appointment at the VAMC. Heather completed medical school at the University of Michigan,

residency at Northwestern, and GI/Hepatology training at Scripps Clinic and UCSD. She was on

faculty at UCSD in transplant hepatology from 2007-2015. During this time, she started the

transplant hepatology fellowship program, participated in clinical research with the NASH CRN

and the North American Consortium for the study of End Stage Liver Disease (NACSELD), and

(along with Denise Kalmaz and Sheila Crowe) co-founded GLOGE. She subsequently spent four

years working at Kaiser Permanente where she built a care pathway for management of NAFLD,

helped to develop an HCC tumor board, and participated in epidemiological research on NAFLD

in Kaiser’s Southern California population. Heather serves on the Clinical Practice Update

Committee for the AGA and on the Maintenance of Certification Committee for the AASLD.

Outside of work, Heather enjoys spending time with her husband Mark, son Andrew (13) and

daughter Audrey (10). She practices yoga and enjoys making pottery.

Start Date:

May 14, 2019

Welcome Lysianne Pham, IBD Nurse Practitioner

Lysianne (Liz-e-ann) Pham is a Family Nurse Practioner, born and raised in San Diego. She

finished her undergraduate in Pharmacological Chemistry at UCSD and began her nursing career

at UCSD in Hillcrest as a Clinical Nurse II. Started working with UCSD GI IBD and enjoying it! She

has learned a lot thus far and is continuously excited to be an intricate part of the team! Her

boyfriend’s name is Jeremiah and she has two step-children, Giada (9) and Sebastian (5). They

love doing outdoor activities together, such as: paddle boarding, Padres games, Kayaking, hiking,

ect. Her new goal for is to read 19 books in 2019, currently she is on book #7. She looks forward

working with everyone and is excited to be a part of the team.

Welcome Mary Kirk, Motility Nurse Practitioner

Mary Kirk Clarke earned her bachelor’s in Nursing from Xavier University and Masters as a Nurse

Practitioner from University of Cincinnati. She has worked in psychiatry, Med/Surg and in the

perioperative setting in her nursing career. She has been working at UCSD in the Department of

Minimally Invasive Surgery in program development and assessing pre and post-op esophageal,

general surgery and bariatric patients. She has also assisted in surgery as RNFA (Registered Nurse

First Assistant). She has authored patient educational materials and provides teaching to patients

regarding management of their diseases. In addition, she lectures at the annual conference for

California Association of Nurse Practitioners on bariatric, esophageal and common surgery

disorders, and has lectured to physicians and other health care providers on recruiting patients

for research as well as management of patients.

UC San Diego

Welcome New Fellows/Adv Fellows

Aws Hasan

Clinical Fellow

Fady Youseff

Clinical Fellow

Waseemn Ahmed

Clinical Fellow

Joseph Meserve

Research Fellow

Sushrut Jangi

Advanced IBD Fellow

Armen Eskandari

Advanced Endoscopy Fellow

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Good-bye and thank you to Norman Goldberg who retired

at the end of June 2019. He has been with the program and

in service to the Division for over 20 years. Dr. Goldberg

provided the program with valuable mentorship,

knowledge, and advice to the fellows. Many past trainees

and faculty from as far back as 1991 offered words of

praise. He made an enormous impact on the lives and

careers of many in the Division and will be missed.

UC San Diego

Retirement

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Dr. Bernd Schnabl is Professor of Medicine in the Division of

Gastroenterology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Trained as a

physician scientist in gastroenterology and hepatology, he is combining

his expertise in clinical medicine with basic science in the field of chronic

liver diseases. He completed a clinical fellowship in Gastroenterology at

Columbia University in New York City. Since his appointment to the UC

San Diego faculty in 2008, the major focus of his laboratory is to

investigate the pathogenesis of alcoholic and non-alcoholic fatty liver

diseases. Within this primary focus he mainly investigates functional

changes in the intestinal microbiota and in the mucosal immune system

during liver disease. A very important part of his laboratory is a

translational aspect to identify targets for microbiota-centered

therapies. He pioneered work using engineered bacteria and

bacteriophages to edit the intestinal microbiota and to treat chronic

liver disease. Dr. Schnabl has published extensively (more than 125 publications) in journals including Cell,

Nature, Nature Medicine, Cell Host & Microbe, PNAS, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Nature Communications,

Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Journal of Hepatology in recent years. He has authored multiple reviews

and book chapters.

Throughout his career, he has been honored with a number of awards and distinctions. These include a

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Award from the German Research Foundation, a Schering-Plough

Unrestricted Educational Award from the European Foundation for the Study of Liver Diseases (EASL), an

American Gastroenterological Association (AGA)/Astra Zeneca Fellowship - Faculty Transition Award (FFTA) and

a NIH K08 Career Development grant. He was elected as full member to the prestigious American Society for

Clinical Investigation (ASCI) in 2016. He was privileged to present the Hans Popper Basic Science State-of-the-

Art Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the

keynote lecture at a Gordon Research Conference in 2017.

Dr. Schnabl is principal investigator of a VA Merit Award, multiple NIH grants, foundation awards and industry-

sponsored projects. He recently became the Director of the first NIH-supported P30 Silvio O. Conte Digestive

Diseases Research Core Center in San Diego, which he co-directs with Dr. Lars Eckmann.

He has continuously served as member on multiple local, national and international committees. In particular,

he is currently Steering Committee member and Co-Chair of the Translational Sub-committee of the NIH/NIAAA

funded Alcoholic Hepatitis Network (AlcHepNetwork) that was launched in 2018. He is Editorial Board member

of major GI journals including Gut, Hepatology and Journal of Hepatology.

For a full listing of publications, lab members and research activities of the Schnabl lab, please visit his lab

website. https://medschool.ucsd.edu/som/medicine/divisions/gastro/research/labs/schnabl-lab

Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Bernd Schnabl

UC San Diego

Page 6

UC San Diego

Congratulations to Dr. Thomas Savides for receiving

the 2019 American Society for Gastrointestinal

Endoscopy “Master Endoscopist” Award at DDW in

San Diego. This award recognizes clinicians who

spend the majority of their time in patient care and

are recognized regionally or nationally for their

expertise and contributions to the practice of GI

endoscopy.

Each year the graduating fellows award a member of the clinical faculty the clinical teaching award for consistently providing superior clinical teaching. The 2019 Clinical Teaching Award went to Dr. Irine Vodkin.

Dr. Kim Barrett has been selected as

Director of the Division of Graduate

Education at the National Science

Foundation in Washington

DC. Congratulations on this opportunity to

contribute to national priorities for

graduate education and training.

Dr. Kim Barrett was also honored with the

Hans Ussing Lectureship of the American

Physiological Society this past spring 2019.

Congratulations to

Dr. Nedret Copur-Dahi

for receiving the

Medicine 401

Excellence in Teaching

Award for academic

year 2018-2019 from

3rd year medical

students!

Awards & Recognitions

Congratulations Erik

Contreras for recently

completed his master’s

degree in Nursing and

became a Nurse Practitioner.

We are very proud of him and

want to wish him luck in his

new career!

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GI Jeopardy

The results are in and out of 149 GI training programs competing, we are proud to announce that our GI fellows made the top 5 teams in GI Jeopardy. This means a 2-person team will represent UCSD in front of a live audience at the GI Jeopardy competition at ACG 2019 Annual Meeting and Postgraduate Course in San Antonio, TX on October 26, 2019. If you are planning on attending ACG, please make sure to attend and cheer on our UCSD team and congratulate our fellows when you see them for a job well done!!!

Congratulations Beth Stanton on receiving your CGRN certification in May! Beth has been a part of the UCSD Hillcrest GI team since February of 2018. She has been a GI nurse for 14 years and recently decided it was time to get certified in the field that she has devoted most of her nursing career to. Beth is only the 3rd nurse at Hillcrest to gain certification in GI and we want to say Congratulations to her on a job well done!

Alan Hofmann, Emeritus Professor, was

given a Distinguished Alumnus Award

from the Johns Hopkins School of

Medicine. The award was for his scientific

contributions to gastroenterology and

Hepatology. Hofmann graduated from

the medical school in 1955.

Awards & Recognitions Continued

Congratulations Summer

Collier on receiving a 2018

Nursing Excellence Clinical

Award, “Overall Advanced

Practice Nurse of the Year”

NPF Designation

Congratulations on becoming a National

Pancreas Foundation center of

Excellence. These centers are at premier

healthcare facilities that focus on

multidisciplinary treatment of pancreas

disease, in which patients are being

treated holistically with a focus on the

best possible outcomes and improved

quality of life. According to Dr. Wilson

Kwong, UCSD offers a multidisciplinary

pancreatitis clinic which allows patients

to see an interventional

gastroenterologist who specializes in

pancreatic disease as well as a surgeon

who specializes in pancreas surgery in

the same visit so that the patient is

offered the complete spectrum of

treatment options.

“UCSD has been offering cutting edge

high quality pancreatitis care for many

years and the NPF designation allows

patients to identify UCSD as a center they

can get high quality comprehensive

pancreatitis care with the latest

treatment options” -Dr. Wilson Kwong

Dr. Gobind Anand was appointed the new

Associate Fellowship Program Director starting in

July 2019.

UC San Diego

UC San Diego

Clinical Updates

In August of 2019, the Division of Gastroenterology expanded its

clinical footprint to the new outpatient pavilion Rancho Bernardo

located at 16950 Via Tazon San Diego, CA 92127. This allows us to

have a patient centered focus and bring our care locally to the

patients we serve in that area. Dr. Bortniker is providing General

Gastroenterology care on Wednesdays currently and we hope to

continue to expand our access as the patient population grows.

Care Navigation Hub

Over the past year all the subspecialties of

Gastroenterology have transitioned the call center

to a Care Navigation Hub model. This model has

centralized, and cross trained our call center reps so

they are better equipped to schedule patients in

real time. This has also provided us the opportunity

to hire more staff to actively manage provider

schedules and do outbound calls to ensure patients

are getting the earliest visit possible. The Care

Navigation Hub also has nurses and techs readily

available to take patient calls on the spot to address

patients concerns in real time. This initiative

allowed us to use a team approach to fill our no

show and late cancellation appointments while also

optimizing our providers time while in clinic and

putting the patients’ needs first. In September, we

are taking a deep dive into the Hepatology

scheduling model to transition to a Care Navigation

Hub model next.

In November, we will be rolling out a new physician scheduling software called QGenda.

QGenda builds provider schedules with the highest quality, transparency, flexibility and,

fairness possible. It is an integrative scheduling engine that solves conflicts as the schedule is built while maintain

proper coverage and equal distribution. QGenda will allow our providers to have access to their schedules at their

fingertips. Providers will have the ability to swap shifts and open and close clinical sessions all in a mobile app. As

we continue to build out the platform, we will have a provider in service so providers can learn how to view their

schedules, request time away, and make swaps within the system.

As we continue to grow our clinical footprint, the

Procedural Team is busy preparing for our opening of

additional outpatient procedure space at Koman Family

Outpatient Pavilion with a target opening date of

October 2019. This will allow our patients to been seen

sooner and have more availability in scheduling their

procedures while also providing additional access for our

hospital patients so they can be on the road to recovery

and back to their daily lives sooner.

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.

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Research Spotlight: The San Diego Digestive Diseases Research Center (SDDRC)

We are proud to announce the launch of the San Diego

Digestive Diseases Research Center (SDDRC). Made possible by

a $6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the

SDDRC is the only one of its kind in the San Diego region, with

just 17 similarly funded centers throughout the nation. The

center will act as a hub for catalyzing and promoting research

on inflammatory diseases of the digestive tract, drawing upon

the expanding biomedical research enterprise in San Diego and

fostering increased interaction between leading academic

investigators whose work complements the focus of the

SDDRC.

The SDDRC involves investigators from UC San Diego, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla Institute for Allergy

and Immunology and Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. Bernd Schnabl, MD, and Lars Eckmann,

MD, both professors of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, are co-directors of the SDDRC.

SDDRC headquarters in the Biomedical Research

Facility in the UC San Diego Medical School

microbiomics and functional genomics. Each core is led by

outstanding leaders in their fields.

For more information on the SDDRC or to become a member,

please visit sddrc.ucsd.edu or email sddrc@ucsd.edu

“It has been our vision for the past 30 years

and it is now coming to life,” said Schnabl.

“We are continuously searching for better therapeutic targets

for these diseases that can severely impact a patient’s quality

of life. The work that will be done in this new center will lead

to identifying targets that we can propose for clinical trials

with the ultimate goal of improved treatment options.”

SDDRC investigators will conduct research related to inflammation, immunity and host-microbial interactions in

both the gastrointestinal tract and liver. Research will range from basic mechanisms governing inflammation and

the role of infection, immune and inflammatory responses in preclinical studies to translational studies with human

tissues and clinical trials.

The center will also offer pilot and feasibility grants, enrichment programs, seminars and symposiums and is

focused on three main cores.

The Human Translational Core will provide access to specimens from patients with gastrointestinal and liver

diseases. The Preclinical Models Core will facilitate and assist in characterizing and understanding gastrointestinal

and liver diseases using animal models. The Microbiomics and Functional Genomics Core will offer cutting-edge

and cost-effective access to sequencing-based technologies in

UC San Diego

Janki Patel came from our

own Internal Medicine

Residency program. Janki

is joining the faculty of

Scripps Encinitas.

Yash Mittal came to the

program from Yale

Residency program. Yash is

joining the practice at

Scripps Mercy in San Diego.

Frances Onyimba came to

us from Johns Hopkins.

Frances is joining the

faculty of University of

Maryland.

UC San Diego

Gastroenterology Fellowship Graduation 2019

On June 1, 2019, faculty, fellows and staff gathered to celebrate the

training completion of our third-year fellows: Yash Mittal, Frances

Onyimba, Janki Patel, and Matt Tsai.

Tom and Wendy Savides again hosted the event in their home and we

thank them for allowing us to come into their home every year.

Another tradition is Wendy baking the graduation cake. This year there

were 13 diseases with a common theme that the graduating fellows

had to identify as part of their graduation requirements. We are happy

to say with some assistance all passed. Can you identify the diseases?

Matt Tsai came to us

from University of

Miami. He is staying on

at UCSD to finish his

research training.

Page 10

We wish our graduating

fellows the best of luck!

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Research Seminar: Precision Medicine in Gastroenterology and Hepatology June 7, 2019

Dr. Veeral Ajmera and Dr. Niels

Vande Casteele secured the

participation of internationally

renowned experts from diverse

disciplines to cover the role of

existing and omics-based

biomarkers for clinical research,

drug development and clinical

practice in the areas of

inflammatory bowel diseases,

liver diseases and

gastrointestinal malignancies.

Pictured (L to R): Veeral Ajmera, Niels Vande Casteele, Rohit Loomba, Stephan R. Targan, Larry

Smarr, Jason Sicklick, Yujin Hoshida, Samir Gupta, Yuko Kono, and William Sandborn.

UC San Diego NASH Preceptorship July 16, 2019

Rohit Loomba, MD, gave a lecture titled, “How Do I Treat NASH Now and

Why?” to Intercept participants inside the ACTRI Auditorium

NASH Preceptorship was hosted by the UC San Diego NAFLD Research Center and Course Directors Dr. Rohit

Loomba and Dr. Veeral Ajmera. It was a state-of-the-art one day preceptorship with participants from Intercept

which provided a combination of advanced training in clinical assessment of NAFLD, short didactics, a CPC

presentation, hands on experiences and a patient panel.

Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute Building

Recent Events

UC San Diego

UC San Diego School of Medicine Established in 1968, University of California San Diego School of Medicine is consistently ranked among the top medical school programs in the country for primary care and research by U.S. News & World Report and among the top 10 medical schools for National Institutes of Health total funding. The school is internationally recognized as a place where discoveries are delivered — bringing breakthroughs from the research lab to patients' bedsides. Faculty members care for patients at UC San Diego Health, where primary care is available at several convenient locations throughout San Diego County and our advanced specialty care consistently ranks among the nation’s best. For more information, visit medschool.ucsd.edu.

Our Mission The UC San Diego Gastroenterology & Hepatology Division will provide the best clinical care to those afflicted with

gastrointestinal and liver diseases, investigate at the clinical and basic levels the best way to improve those diseases, and

educate trainees on how to best approach the care of patients with those diseases. The UC San Diego GI Division will

strive to be nationally recognized through its faculty as well as innovations that will improve the care of patients with

gastrointestinal and liver diseases nationwide. The UC San Diego GI Division was founded in 1970 by Henry Wheeler,

MD, who served as its first division chief. Later, Jon I. Isenberg, MD, led the division from 1979 to 1993, followed by C.

Richard Boland, MD, from 1995 to 2003, John M. Carethers, MD, from 2004 - 2009 and William J. Sandborn from 2011-

present. The GI Fellowship Training Program commenced in 1974 and the NIH Training Grant was initially funded in

1976. The division has trained several local gastroenterologists in San Diego, as well as developed several academicians

at University based medical schools, including some with leadership and administrative positions.

Charitable Donations You may contribute directly to UC San Diego GI by visiting our website at http://www.gastro.ucsd.edu and clicking on

the GIVE tab on the right-hand side. Remember: if you itemize, you may be able to receive a charitable deduction for

2019 for your gifts received on or before December 31.

UC San Diego

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